Hey everyone, I hope you are doing well. Today was a bit of an adventure as it was time to go to a new city called Melaka. I wasn’t really sure what to expect, but the area where we had planned to go is a World Heritage site, so some people think it’s pretty special.
The important events of the day started at 8:50 AM when I once again used Grab to summon a car from Mont Kiara to TBS station. The car arrived at 8:57, and by 9:37 we were pulling up in front of the station. The total cost of the 19 km ride was 22.5 RM ($4.77 USD).
The station was much larger than I had imagined, but it was also very organized. The day before I had used easybook.com to buy two direct bus tickets to Melaka for a total of $5.32 USD. After grabbing some snacks, I was quickly able to approach the appropriate counter and pick up my tickets. Except for the lack of any obvious security measures, there was a very airport vibe, and by 9:54 AM we were at the waiting area in front of our gate.
Just as the ticket had indicated, at 10:30 AM sharp we entered the comfortable bus and started on our way. The seat and the trip itself was very comfortable, and at 12:31 PM we pulled up outside the Melaka bus terminal.
My first impression was that it was very hot, but also a nice enough looking place. I once again got a Grab car at 12:37 PM, with the car arriving almost instantly.
At 12:58 PM I was paying 9 RM ($1.90 USD) fee for the 4 km trip. And that was when we had our first hiccup. The Heeren house lodging which I had booked for three nights ($150 USD) on booking.com appeared to be closed. When I was able to contact someone on the phone numbers posted outside, they said they had no record of our booking.
A bit of further investigation revealed that there are several hotels called Heeren, and we were at the wrong one. Fortunately, the right one was only about 15 meters away, so it was easy enough to walk right over to that one, Heeren by the River hotel. Unfortunately, that one was also closed. On the plus side, some random guest let us get in from the sun into the lobby, where we were finally able to get ahold of someone on the phone who told us to just stick our bags behind reception and to come back in about 45 minutes.
So at 1:28 PM, we left our bags and headed out walking. The sun was very strong and the heat relentless, but there were several interesting shops, including a place called a flea shop, which actually assisted appeared to just be a discount store, kind of like a “dollar store”.
Then at 2:35 PM we tried to get some food at the highly recommended Jonker 88, but there was no obvious way to order food and the staff were rather rude. So, we decided to head back towards a Mexican restaurant we had seen a couple of blocks earlier called Mamasita Melaka. This seemed like a bad idea, but we were hot and the place had nice decor.
Amazingly, the Mexican restaurant was surprisingly good. I’m not willing to say it was outstanding, but I would definitely recommend it. The food was decent, the decor nice, and the service good. The cost for two people was 88.6 RM ($18.78 USD). We stayed there until 3:24 PM and then walked back to the hotel, arriving two minutes later.
Again, the door was locked, and we had to go through the whole process of calling and asking someone to help, but by 3:48 PM we were already in the room. Despite having already paid $150 USD on booking.com, we had to separately pay a 6 RM “heritage tax” in cash. It all seemed like a scam since the money went into the same register as everything else, but it was only the equivalent of $1.27 so I didn’t care.
The room looked alright and the bathroom was huge. Furthermore, once the air conditioner was going for a while it was a tolerable temperature. The room definitely should also have had a pedestal or table fan as well, since the air conditioner didn’t do a very good job of distributing the cooled air throughout the room. I decided to rest a bit until the day cooled down
At 7:05 PM it was fully dark and a bit cooler outside, so I decided to go out exploring.
At around 7:36 PM I had already walked through “little India” and then found myself in a strange mall called The Shore.
At first I thought the issue was that it seemed to be mostly abandoned, but then I realized that the issue was not that there were no shops, but that there were almost no people. Most of the spots had the lights on, doors open and even plenty of merchandise, but there were just no people . . . Basically, it was like a movie set, but the actors and film crew had not yet arrived with any of the equipment. I considered calling out, but decided against it . . . What if someone answered and it wasn’t what I was wanting? Better to play it safe.
Anyways, I left the abandoned movie set at 7:44 and continued my walk.
Continuing with the theme of strange shopping centers, I then at 7:54 PM found myself in yet another one.
However, as can be seen, here the issue was that almost all the locales seemed to be either empty or shut up. All in all, this second one seemed less creepy than the first one. I did however start to wonder what was going on. Where were the people, and where were the stores? Was I unknowingly skipping through alternate shopping themed dimensions?
On the whole though, inter-dimensional travel seemed unlikely, so I simply excited the shopping center and continued walking.
At 8:02 PM I breathed an easy sigh of relief as I turned a corner and saw a few people. There weren’t a lot, but there were several cars moving, and I could see what reasonably appeared to be humans in the distance. I seemed to now be in some sort of a night market.
Similar to the “flea shop” and earlier “e-mart” which only had convenience store items, some of the store names in the night market also seemed randomly assigned, like the “Secondhand store” which was only selling beans new shoes. Still nothing particularly nefarious seemed to be happening in the night market. There were just very few clients.
At 8:29 PM I finally exited the very organized and clean, yet still sort of depressing night market, once again determined to make it back to my familiar, reasonably populated shopping dimension. There were several nice night sites along the way, and I actually did make it back to my land of capitalistic success at 9:31 PM.
In celebration, I figured the most appropriate thing to do would be to get some dinner at McDonald’s. Scorn me if you will, but few places were open, and I’m not afraid to admit that living in India, I actually do miss the occasional beef hamburger from McDonald’s. In case you are wondering, yes, the food tasted exactly the same as in either the USA or Costa Rica. Furthermore, the price was right at only 16 RM ($3.42 USD) for a double cheeseburger, medium french fries, medium soft drink and a strawberry sundae!
At 9:52 PM, I then left to go walking back to my lodging, arriving back to the room at 10:08 PM.
While I will admit that the day was a bit odd, it was certainly interesting. I was also confident that my first full day in Melaka would be a textbook tourist experience with plenty of culture and classic historical sites.
Anyways, for now I will close. I wonder, have any of you ever had hotel and “shopping” experiences like these while on vacation? If so, let me know about it in the comment section below.
Travels with Jay 